


Beneath the stains of time

by MyFandomCausesHanaji



Series: the wars we wage [1]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Reality, Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Drama, Emotional Hurt, Feels, Fix-It of Sorts, Future Character Death, Grief/Mourning, Hurt No Comfort, I took fluff and made ultimate angst out of it, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Mental Breakdown, Mental Instability, Possible Character Death, Post-Canon, Pre-Relationship, Responsibility, Second Chances, Self-Sacrifice, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, Tragedy, War, emotional breakdown, it's not a future fic, mb a little bit, sort of, there is some hope there if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-26
Updated: 2017-05-26
Packaged: 2018-10-30 15:30:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10879698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MyFandomCausesHanaji/pseuds/MyFandomCausesHanaji
Summary: “You are married”, neither a question nor a statement and Roy is not sure if he just imagined a quiver in his own voice.Edwards moves his hand a bit further from where it was resting on his face and looks at the ring in question with a puzzling expression Roy fails to recognize."Yes."





	Beneath the stains of time

**Author's Note:**

> Placed about a couple of years after the Promised Day.  
> Roy is a Brigadier General and Edward still has his alchemy.
> 
> Million thanks for **Yukionna13** for betaing. You were incredibly helpful, and I can’t be more grateful! ^_^
> 
> The title is borrowed from _Johnny Cash - Hurt._

The first thing Brigadier General Roy Mustang feels upon reaching his house after a long day at work is strong surge of alchemy coming from inside.

The first thing he sees stepping over the threshold is a dim blue light of a dying reaction of a big unfamiliar array on the floor of his living room, and the lone figure standing in the middle of it with it’s back to him. The person is wearing a dirty shirt, which color might have been white once but now it looks worn and grey. One sleeve is ripped off and the exposed arm is covered with bloody bandages. There is a stack of papers shoved in the back pocket of the shabby black pants. Strands of dirty blond hair are falling out of a messy bun. Roy raises his arm and cold light of the still slightly shimmering array on the floor and warm street lights coming from the windows lighten up the red array on his gloved hand. He presses his fingers together, ready to snap, but as he opens his mouth to demand answers from this person, the hoarse voice, that sounds vaguely familiar, stops him.

“It is so quiet here,” having said that, the blond man doesn’t move.

“Who are you and what are you doing in my house?” Roy asks in a low voice.

The stranger slowly turns and at the sight of indifferent golden eyes, Roy’s breath catches in his throat. And though there is ages worth of tiredness in those eyes, there is no mistaking who they belong to, and yet below these familiar eyes is the face of a stranger. Roy takes in pale skin, dark shadows under sunken eyes, cheekbones which are more pronounced than what might be considered healthy, an old scar crossing the blond’s forehead, and at least two weeks worth of stubble - this face looks about two decades older than the one he knows, and yet as impossible as it might be, the man standing in the middle of Roy’s living room is undoubtedly Edward Elric.

_Or at least how Edward Elric would look like being aged twenty years from now._

Not sure what to make out of what he is seeing, Roy doesn’t even try to hide a surprise in his voice: “Fullmetal?”

With a neutral expression on his face - as if this situation is entirely normal for him - Edward sighs: “Ah, it’s you, Roy. Told you not to call me that”, and he turns away again, still not moving from his spot on the floor.

Not lowering his arm yet, Roy lifts an eyebrow in confusion and reaching to his commanding voice in a hope that this will help to get a better reaction from the blond man in front of him: “What are you doing in my house, what is this array for, and shouldn’t you be in Creta now?”

_And why do you look like you’ve been through the hell and back?_

As the last syllables leave Roy’s lips, the blond snaps his head up and looks at Roy again, and the black haired man is startled as he sees these amber eyes widening as if they had seen a ghost. And then Edward makes a sudden move towards Roy as if he wants to come closer, but he instantly draws back, changing his mind. Edward’s lips are quivering, mouth opening and his breath whispers through his lips in a quiet tone of a word with a feeble trace of hope in it, sounding so different from how he did just a moment ago:

“Roy...”

The sound of his name hangs between them, and Roy doesn’t know what to make of the emotions roving on blond man’s face.

“I’d say you look like hell, Fullmetal, or like you’ve come through one,” Roy hides his confusion beneath a familiar mask of mockery and forces his face to look as unimpressed as possible. After all, this is their usual way of conversing, exchanging scathing comments, pushing each other's buttons, it is comfortable and soothing in it’s own way, “Or were you tricked into taking some magic pill with the promise of making you taller? Well, I hate to break it to you, but instead you just aged without gaining height at all. What an irony, Fullmetal, and here I thought you are a prodigy. You must’ve been really desperate.”

Golden eyes blink in surprise and suddenly the man before him is laughing. His head is thrown back and that was definitely not a reaction Roy would expect on a short-joke, but it’s contagious and despite himself Roy feels his own lips forming a smile, but before he has a chance for something more, the sound of laughing filling the room changes, and there are choked sounds in it, and Roy realises he mistook joy for hysteria.

Shuddering inhales one after another, air filling Edwards lungs, fueling his sobs-laughs-coughing, never fully breathing it out as though he’s no longer consciously remembering to do it, and suddenly he is falling down on his knees and his hands are tight on his face, and he is fully crying now, mumbling in between his whimpers, and Roy catches “... did it..”, “..worked..” and several sounds that distinctly resemble his name, and he can’t remember if he has ever seen Fullmetal crying, and crying like that, putting all of himself into this action.

Roy doesn’t know what to do, and if he should do anything at all. He wants to reach to this lump of a man on his floor and offer some comfort, but he is not sure if it is safe to cross the lines of the slightly shimmering and obviously still active array, so he chooses not to interfere.

After half a minute that seems to last an eternity for two men frozen in this surreal moment, Edward gets to his feet, damp from tears, blond bangs are clinging to the sides of his face, pain in his eyes, red trails on his cheeks. He takes a shallow breath and says: “Sorry”, and Roy thinks he has already exhausted the amount of surprise his mind can experience for this evening, because just seeing his former subordinate appearing from a thin air in the middle of his house could be close enough for that, let alone this former subordinate aging at least a decade or even two in a length of a one year since he last saw him and looking like he spent this last year or those decades in a war zone, but “sorry” is not a word he would expect to hear from the Fullmetal he knows, and the thought of what might have happened to make the boy change like that, to look like that, squeezes Roy’s heart in a suffocating hold and he would tear it out of his chest with pliers to make this haunted look on the blond man’s face disappear - hasn’t this boy gone through enough, hasn’t he suffered enough?

Letting out a deep, steadying breath, not ready to face the waves of emotions mixed up with shock, trying to claw their way out of his ribcage, Roy fights back the questions that are gathering on the tip of his tongue and faces instead what seems to be more important at that moment, as is - technicalities - he can deal with his crazed feelings later.

“I’ve never doubted your ability in achieving the impossible, Full… Edward, but I’m afraid this might require some additional explanations,” Roy gestures to the slightly shimmering array, not even trying to hide the surprise in his voice.

“It is a time-crossing array. I don’t want to say ‘time-travel’ ‘cause it sounds stupid. But basically it is. Time travel I mean…”, Edward’s voice is still shaking a bit from his recent break down, and he sounds more uncertain than Roy has ever heard him, “I… I just didn’t expect it to work. I mean I expected it to work of course, but not this time, and…” he drops his gaze from Roy’s face and looks to the side and curls into himself, his voice trailing off and it seems like he is loosing the track of what he is saying, and Roy has never seen him like that, lost and almost broken, mumbling under his breath, and this sight is highly disturbing, and the twist of unease knots in his stomach, and Roy doesn’t know anymore what to make out of it and he only wishes this to be a horrible dream.

“Took me almost two years to finish it and the bitch is still not stable enough... I dreamed of this so many times. And I thought I am dreaming again, I wasn’t sure… And then you sounded so surprised... It is a fucking miracle I managed to make it precise enough so I could actually choose a time interval I needed it to send me to. A miracle, haha, I am actually saying it, can you believe this... But it will send me back soon and I can’t step outside it, and yeah, don’t cross it too, if you don’t wanna be send to the future, and trust me, you don’t, and stealing you is not why I am here, though the thought actually never crossed my mind… And it’s really you, isn’t it? You look so different than in those dreams...”

And suddenly the man is silent and looking somewhere behind Roy with empty stare, and Roy absentmindedly wonders if Edward is currently considering actually stealing him and taking him back to whenever he came from, or he is simply being lost in memories of the dreams he had.

Time-travel… Roy is not sure he believes what he just heard or is it even possible to fully convince human brain that such thing as time travel can actually exist, but despite the obvious disparities Roy is witnessing between the boy he knows and the man who is now standing lost in his thoughts in the middle of the room, he is undoubtedly Edward Elric, Fullmetal Alchemist, Alchemist of the People, and Roy chooses to believe him, because he likes to think that aside from Alphonse he is the only person who knows Edward well enough to never mistake him for someone trying to impersonate him.

At a loss for words ( _What do people say when they get a visit from someone from the future?_ ), stunned and shocked by this whole bizarre situation Roy says what he probably should’ve said sooner: "As much as I am delighted with this unexpected and with all honesty shocking visit, I am sure you do realize that it is not something that happens often to me, so forgive me being a little startled, Edward", in the act of a habit more than of an actual necessity, he reaches for his usual professional masks to hide his malaise beneath them.

The sound of his words shakes Edward from his trance and the blond man snaps his head up and once again looks at the man in front of him. Roy forces his feet to unglue themselves from the floor and starts moving deeper into the room. Not looking at his unexpected visitor, he walks past this older version of Fullmetal to the small cabinet in the corner of the room - he desperately needs a drink; "To what do I owe the pleasure?" he finishes, grabbing a bottle of whiskey from the cabinet and pouring himself a drink, while trying to ignore the feeling of intense look drilling itself in the back of his head.

"I had to see you," he hears Edward answering behind him, and he turns around still holding a glass of whiskey in his hand, and looks at the young man again.

Roy slowly takes a sip from the glass. Alcohol burns its way down his throat and this little sensation throws away that feeble hope of just being asleep and dreaming this whole experience.

The older man ( _Is he even older than his guest or is it another way around?_ ) raises one eyebrow, “Is this seeing me thing somehow connected with the fact that you just spent a whole minute daydreaming and apparently considering a possibility of, as you put it, stealing me to whenever it is you time-traveled, sorry, time-crossed from?”

He doesn’t ask the blond how exactly he managed to accomplish that but Roy realises that he doesn’t feel even slightly surprised - Fullmetal has always been a prodigy. If anyone ought to actually discover a way of time traveling it should be him and no one else.

“I’m not gonna fucking steal you, Roy! It would ruin everything, and it’s not like I actually can...”, there is a frown on Edward’s face and this name said with that voice lies unfamiliar on Roy’s ears, and now hearing Edward calling him by his given name again, he wonders absentmindedly at what point in the future Fullmetal is going to abandon his usual way of calling the older man “bastard”.

Roy takes another sip from the glass and crosses the room again, carefully avoiding stepping on the lines on the floor. He sits in the armchair facing Edward, not trusting his legs enough to stand through this whole conversation.

“Well, I am flattered that you came all this way to just see me then, Edward. Admit it, you were just missing my young handsome face, I bet I am quite old in the time you came from, if the way you look says something about my possible age in your… timeline.” Roy is perfectly aware of how absurd he sounds, talking like that, like nothing strange is happening, like hosting guests from future is his usual way of spending his off-time, but his mind is running in circles shrieking doubts at him, and he desperately needs some time to adapt to the situation at hand and calm his thoughts.

Edward blinks and releases a choked sound that could be a suppressed laugh if it didn’t sound borderline hysterical. His eyes, shimmering with the remains of tears, never leave Roy’s, and the latter grows to feel a little uncomfortable under the intense gaze.

_There is no life in your eyes. What happened, Ed?_

“That would be stroking your ego too much, and neither of us want that,” there is a shadow of oh so familiar mocking in this phrase but it lacks bite and hardly does anything to ease up tension between two men.

 _‘How is Alphonse?_ Roy nearly asks but catches himself the last moment and he has to push down a strangled laugh that threatens to leave his throat. He is trying to make small talk. A _small talk_! The future version of the most brilliant man Roy has ever known in his life accomplished an impossible act and went through very time to appear in the middle of his house and clearly there’d been a serious matter that made him do it, and Roy is making small talk with him.

This is bizarre and beyond anything he has ever experienced and he actually asks himself if he is just imagining this whole situation, and did he perhaps get attacked on his way home, or got into a car accident and now he is lying in a hospital bed in coma and his brain is playing tricks on him showing him _this_ , and why _this_ , why mocking him with this image of a broken tired man he used to see so fierce and full of life?

He doesn’t let this show on his face, as he drinks down the rest of what’s left in his glass, forcing his fingers not to shake, and sets the glass down on the small table beside the armchair.

“I’m sorry, Edward, please understand my situation, I have so many questions I should probably ask you about this whole... thing”, and he vaguely gestures with one hand to the array, “and believe me when I say that the state you are currently in is nothing less but highly disturbing, and yet I am not sure if I really want to know the answers,” he lifts his eyes to look at his guest and is taken aback by a flick of disappointment he sees on the blond man’s face, though he is not sure who or what this disappointment is aimed on.

“Funny, I’ve forgotten that you used to talk with me with your masks on”, the choked sound again, a remnant of the break-down Edward had a few minutes ago, although this was probably the first time today when the blond sounded really lucid. And as he draws his hand down his face as if trying to wipe the tiredness from it, something catches Roy’s attention, flicking of blue light from the array refracts itself in the small metal band on Edward’s fourth finger.

“You are married”, neither a question nor a statement and Roy is not sure if he just imagined a quiver in his own voice.

Edwards moves his hand a bit further from where it was resting on his face and looks at the ring in question with a puzzling expression Roy fails to recognize.

"Yes," and he withdraws - more guarded and distant than before, and the answer is weak, as if he had to force this word out, as if he is not even sure it being a truth, and those familiar amber eyes of a stranger look straight into Roy’s dark ones, and he thinks at this moment, that he could've never imagined Fullmetal sounding so weak and dim - the boy he knows is a definition of force, vigorous of mind and body, he doesn't do anything in halves, he storms into your life and makes himself at home there, screaming, running, laughing, waves of golden hair, sunshine pouring through golden eyes - it is a never ending buoyant hurricane of fierce energy, actions and emotions, laid bare for everyone to see.

But there are no vestiges of the boy Roy knows and secretly loves, ( _because he could never force this on him, he can never add more to the weight Edward already holds on his shoulders, he could never tell him and he never will, and he decided for himself what seems to be a long time ago but in fact what was just little more than one year, but these months were so full of loss, pain and everything that they seemed like several years, that just having this emotion, just having a possibility to love this young man and being able to touch his life even in the slightest way, just standing on the sidelines of it is already more than enough, is already a blessing in itself, and Roy would never ask for more_ ) in the man now standing in front of him.

This man looks tired, weary even, bereft of some metaphorical pillar that had been holding him together and now it seems that even standing upright is taking an effort from him. Roy takes in the hard, set line of Edward's jaw and the frown that twisted his brows; his lips bracketed by hard, hurt lines, and golden eyes, always so full of life, are pinched and pained, they lack sparkle in them, looking lifeless. They seem disinterested to anything they see and it is a painful reminder of the empty stare of that crippled kid all those years ago; and yet being the same shade of gold as the eyes Roy knows so well, they seem darker, and when the man looks deeper in them, he sees ill-disguised grief, and there is this feeling of a pull, as though something is stretching its hands towards him, to grab him and pull him into this abyss, and he has an unpleasant flashback of almost two years ago of his body being dragged by those black hands of Truth towards the unknown, and he notices himself clenching his jaw tight and feels a shiver running down his spine.

_What happened to you, Ed?_

Roy averts his eyes.

“Is it Ms. Rockbell?”, the man asks before realizing how inept this question is, but Edward answers without any break: “Winry is married to Al, they have two kids, the older had his fourteenth birthday two months ago actually… I hope...” he trails off and his eyes are widening in horror. “Shit, I shouldn’t be telling you all this!”

He closes his eyes for a moment and pinches the bridge of his nose with two fingers, and the gesture is so familiar, Roy knows himself doing this too often, but this is the first time when he sees Edward reproducing it.

 _‘Alphonse has a fourteen-year-old child_. Well, will _have_ ’, Roy thinks to himself. Fourteen years old kid... _His_ Edward (and Roy suppresses a laugh at the thought of that passionate brilliant boy being _someone’s_ let alone _his_ ) is near eighteen now and what a bizarre thought talking about Edward’s brother having a kid just four years younger than his uncle. But that makes this Edward at least how old?.. He has always looked slightly younger than his physical age, but it still makes Roy’s guest from future at least couple of years older than him. Well, that answers the question he had earlier - he _is_ in fact younger than this Edward.

_What an irony…_

“Well, that’s interesting. Never would’ve thought I’d live to see Edward Elric in his thirties”, he attempts to joke.

“SHUT UP!”

The scream is sudden and Roy raises his eyebrows in question. Ed takes a deep, shuddering breath, and squeezes his eyes tightly shut, his hands are in fists on his sides.

_What is going to happen, Ed?_

“Edward,” Roy says quietly and he is surprised by the tenderness he hears in his own voice; and the sound of his name rolling off of Roy’s tongue is enough to make Edward look up.

“We don’t have much time. The array I used will reactivate itself in a few minutes. I was trying to make it work longer, but some elements just refused to cooperate and… Nevermind! Dammit, Roy!” he starts pacing in the limited place he has inside the array, throwing occasional glances at the owner of the house.

“Tell me why are you here, Edward. What is going to happen?” and this question is finally asked out loud instead of being repeated over and over in his head.

Edward stops in his pacing and reaches to his pants’ back pocket and takes a thick stack of papers from it. He looks at it for a second and then outstretches his hand towards Roy: “This is all the information you are going to need. I analyzed the whole... situation and I am sure I summed up all the steps and mistakes that led to that… You gotta do just _exactly_ what is said here and everything’s gonna be fine… I’m sure… It _will_ work!” At the end of his little speech Edward sounds frantic and his eyes grow unfocused. At this moment he looks haunted, crazy even, but Roy refuses to accept something like that can happen to Edward Elric, and the thought of what possible, unthinkable atrocities could push a man with such a brilliant mind from sanity into the jagged pit of a broken mind, pierces his stomach with cold needles of dread, and as the sheets of the document start shaking in Edward’s outstretched hand, Roy stands up and hurries to the edge of the array, taking a good care in not touching its lines with his feet.

He reaches for the papers and as his fingers tighten around the stack, a calloused hand grabs his, and he snaps his head up in alarm, and he can’t hold back a gasp at the sight of the expression crossing Edward’s features. His eyes are focused on their joined hands and widened in disbelief, and beaming strands of hope are draining through the cracks in the thick wall of pain which became the very core of this man’s existence, strangling and hiding all, that used to make this man so vivid and incandescent in everything he was doing, and Roy thinks he can almost see the ghost of that sunshine fighting its way from where it has been buried alive, weak and forgotten.

They stay like that for a few breaths, Roy drinking in the emotions playing in Edward’s eyes, the feeling of his warm hand on his, holding him tight - and the world fades into this one moment, this breach in the normal flow of things, where today and tomorrow collides in one, and Roy wants to memorize this, and lost in this moment he can barely hear the words said in breathless whisper:

“Roy, I…”, Edwards stops abruptly and blinks himself out of his thoughts, ripping his gaze from where his hand holds Roy’s, and when he looks up in the other man’s eyes, there is no trace of the light that just been there a moment ago, and Roy thinks if he might have imagined that; and with a painful wince of regret rooting between his eyebrows, Edward loosens his grip, his fingers finally leaving Roy’s hand with a gentle, trailing touch. “Sorry, I just… Haven’t seen you in a while”.

Roy clears his throat and forces his voice to sound as composed as he can manage: “What is in these papers, Edward? Do you want me to read them now or…?

“No, do this later. I guess I should explain you anyway what is going on...”, Edward swallows and folds his arms on his chest. His eyes are looking anywhere but Roy, and the latter realises that the blond man is nervous.

“It started with assassination on the Führer. I won’t bore you with details, all you need is in those documents. We found out the assassins were from Drachma, and later - that some of the Amestrians alchemists were sleeping Drachma agents and…. I listed their names for you so.... They failed then, and we strengthened the security in Führer’s residence. After four more attempts and growing tension near Briggs, shit hit the fan and, well… We started the full scale war with Drachma... When Aerugo joined the war it became more ugly… I… After months of this shitshow I went to Drachma, I was cut from all types of communications… I didn’t know where the others were and if… If the Führer was fine. But I had to go, there was no other choice, you will understand, just read the papers”, his voice is more loud now and he glances at Roy with a plea in his eyes, as if scared the other man will judge him for his actions.

“When after a year or so I was able to go back to Amestris, I was trying to contact others, but… And… And you…” Edward is tightening his grip around himself, trying to hold himself together, to prepare himself for his next words. He inhales sharply and his next words sound harsh and quiet with a flicker of disbelief in them as though he is not ready to accept the reality of what had happened.

“And they said the Führer had been murdered. That was… That was more than two years ago.”

Edward’s words are like a bucket of ice water drenching Roy from head to toe, and for a split second his breath clenches in his throat, and then his heart starts raging inside his chest and his head is spinning as he struggles to fathom the things he just heard. A full scale war with Drachma _and_ Aerugo, and some of his fellow alchemists being traitors...

“I know, if I was there I’d keep this from happening, Roy, but at that time it was necessary for me to go, I couldn’t stay, I couldn’t….”, the blond trails off and shuts his eyes for a moment taking several slow breaths. Roy can see Edward fighting his demons, the memory of another war in this already battle-torn land and Roy wants to scream and ask why does war have to tear this man in front of him apart.

“It is very bad now, Roy, you can’t imagine. You said… When... _before_ I went to Drachma you said it was worse than what you remembered from Ishval, and that was even before it got real ugly. The drachmans are crazy, Roy, it’s a fucking massacre, every day, I don’t remember the day when I haven’t heard someone shooting or screaming… I think we are losing, but I don’t even care anymore… I’ve been working on this array for two years since then… I have to fix this... If I was there…” Edward stops speaking for a moment and tiny tremors run through his body. “I am sorry, I am so sorry, please forgive me, Roy, if I was there… but I couldn’t… and I…”

And Roy feels something breaking inside him, shattering into million pieces, and a wave of nausea raises itself from his stomach, and he has to swallow hard to keep it down.

A deep inhale distracts the black haired man from the sick feeling in his chest and he looks at Edward only to see his defeated and resigned expression. Edward shuts his eyes, and Roy thinks, that he looks like a man going to his own execution, and he dreads what else the blond could tell him that was even worse than what he’s already said. And even with all the years separating Roy from this Edward and the world he lives in, it still hurts seeing this man talking about the hell he has lived. And Roy doesn’t want this hurting man throwing himself over the edge, no matter the reason, he doesn’t want seeing him falling down the dark pit filled with pain and regret. But then Edward speaks again, and the look in his eyes makes Roy’s heart clench in his chest, and he wishes he would never heard these next words and horrible grief in this voice:

“They sent me a telegram saying you got murdered, Roy... A fucking telegram! From someone with a name I’d never even heard! And it is what it’s like now - only names I haven’t heard, people I don’t know, because the ones I know are ALREADY FUCKING DEAD!” and Edward is screaming now. “Everyone I knew is fucking _dead_ or missing, Roy! And I hadn’t seen you or heard from you for more than a year, Roy, a _year_! And then they are sending me this fucking piece of paper! I couldn’t even see you! I couldn’t… I couldn’t even bury you.” He is shaking and panting, choking on these words, going from harsh screams to hoarse whispers, “And I haven’t heard from Al and Winry and the kids _for months_ , Roy! I don’t even know where they are or if they are still alive! I can’t... And when you…”

The words are floating in the air like broken glass, sharp and hurting, and they dig under every centimeter of Roy’s skin and ache through his body. They are dead weight on his shoulders, dragging at his body and clutching a tight fist around his chest. And he can’t bring himself to look anymore at that aching grief that lies thick across Edward’s features, and he finds himself averting his eyes away from the man, who looks like he’s lost the very foundation of his world.

“Sometimes I feel that I am loosing my mind, Roy. I haven’t had normal sleep in eternity. I haven’t seen a familiar face for so long… I am tired, I’m so tired, Roy, I’m not even sure this is really happening now, or maybe I finally went nuts, or I am just lying on the floor in that fucking cold basement, passed out and slowly dying and this is just my mind playing tricks on me...” Edward’s voice is dropping to a whisper and when Roy glances at him, he sees amber eyes widening in pain, horror and silent plea for help, and tears are running down Edward’s face but he doesn’t seem to notice them, and Roy wishes he could cross the remaining distance between them and wipe those tears from that tired face, and reassure him that this is real, but he can only stand on the side and observe, as he’s been doing all this time. Because no matter what he does, he can never be close enough, he can never reach far enough to be there for this brilliant man when it really matters, and he is always forced to stay on the sides, arriving too late, not being fast enough, not being strong enough, always one step behind, watching this boy shed tears, sweat and blood, watching him hurting, pushing himself to the limits and further, achieving impossible and surviving unthinkable, and always alone, and he can never cross this gap, this one little step, to stand not behind but shoulder to shoulder, to not just support from the shadows, but walk side by side, to take a part of the burden, because hasn’t this boy suffered enough, hasn’t he sacrificed enough, hasn’t he deserved some rest and happiness? But this is the way of life, and you can do nothing about it - you get what you get, deserve's got nothing to do with it. And Edward just pulled the short straw.

“You gotta fucking fix this, Roy, please, fix this”.

And in this moment standing in front of the shaking crying man, this remnant of the boy he loves, he realizes that he will do anything to keep the events, that turned the strong, fierce person who had tried to save everyone by just pure will power into this empty and broken shell of a man, from happening, he will give everything and sacrifice anything if it keeps the light in those amber eyes from fading.

“I will, Ed, I promise”. And he really means it.

Edward nods and closes his eyes for a second, and when he opens them again, he is looking through Roy, not seeing - empty stare, far away, lost in memories.

Slender fingers are playing with the small golden band, taking it off and putting it on again, as though hesitating what to do with it. He frowns and his lips twitch, and then making a decision, he pulls the ring off one last time and finally lowers his gaze to look at it. He is silent and Roy can't make himself break this silence, to interrupt whatever train of thoughts is currently taking place in the head of this broken man in front of him.

The array on the floor stars glowing slowly, becoming brighter with every single taken breath.

Edwards blinks himself out of his clouded thoughts, tightens his grip around the golden ring in his hand and raises his head to look at the man before him. Roy's dark eyes meet Edward’s amber ones and he is taken aback by the intensity of emotions playing across blond man’s face.

"There, Bastard, you can have it," the word is just a shadow of how it usually sounds, it has no bite in it, it is merely a tribute to what has become their way of talking to each other.

Edward suddenly throws the ring to Roy and the latter nearly misses it not expecting such action taking place, but catches it last moment and raises his brow in question. The array’s shining is becoming stronger, and bright blue light casts sparks into Edward’s eyes, and just for a moment Roy fools himself into believing that this light comes from the depth of those eyes, the way it always does, the way he is so used to see it, the way it always should, because the mere thought of this brilliant boy going through something horrible enough to take this shining bright light from him makes his chest clench in dread.

“Why?”

“I don’t want it to disappear with me,” Edward answers quietly.

 _What is this array, Edward? Did you have to face Truth to use it? What will you have to pay on your way back?_ Roy hears himself screaming in his own mind, and his mouth is suddenly dry, his head is spinning and he can’t force himself to ask these questions out loud, because he doesn’t want to know the answers.

And then Edward smiles, and it’s weak, but for the first time since Roy saw him standing in his living room this evening the smile reaches his eyes. "Goodbye, Roy", he hears the blond saying, and Roy's heart aches at how tender it sounds, and then dazzle blue light spews upward from the array, carving away every shadow and completely hiding his unexpected guest from Roy's view, and Roy hears someone screaming _“DON”T!”_ , and realises it is he who is doing that, and he can’t fully explain what he wants to say with this ( _don’t say it! don’t leave! don’t pay the price!_ ), and in a blink of a few moments the array lights up for one last time, and it’s over.

Roy is standing frozen in his place in the empty room, with his hand outstretched towards the spot just recently occupied by the blond alchemist. His whole body is humming with shock, jaw clenched tight and he forces the hand holding the ring not to shake when he raises it closer to his face to look at the small golden band laying on his palm.

He takes the ring between two fingers and notices something engraved into the inside of it. He brings the ring closer to his face and he can’t silence a gasp that fades from his tongue as he sees the words forming two familiar names.

But before he can process what he sees, the phone in the hall suddenly starts ringing and the loud sound breaks the silence and fills the room, and Roy almost jumps. He chooses to ignore it, too shaken now to talk to anyone, and besides, what can _possibly_ be more important now than what just happened in this room a minute ago?

So he doesn’t move, waiting for the sound to stop, and a few moments later it’s finally quiet. After a moment Roy lets himself to take a deep breath, trying to calm himself but then the ringing starts again, and it’s loud and annoying, and makes Roy’s head hurt, and the man decides that the best way to stop this is answering the phone. So he pulls himself together and exits the living room to the hall.

Roy clears his throat before answering, and wishes he could just as easily clear his buzzing head. He presses the receiver to his ear and closes his eyes, hoping this may ease a pain throbbing in his head, but before he can say anything, the receiver explodes with a loud burst of familiar voice, and Roy thinks a man can only take so much in one evening before losing his mind.

“Oi, Bastard, it’s me, need some assistance, not like I can’t fucking do it myself, don’t make it get to your head, it is already way too big, but, hey, I think you owe me one, so I decided the time has come to claim my reward for saving the world and shit. I’m arriving in Central tomorrow night, and I have like a fuckton of suitcases, it’s not my fault they have so many awesome books in Creta, you wouldn’t fucking believe, and you know it was easier when Al was a giant suit of armor, but now I have to carry all my shit myself, not like I mind him not being an armor anymore, fuck no, he is much better now, so soft and warm, but when it comes to carrying my luggage he is no use now, not like I was using my brother to carry my luggage, that’s not what I am saying, besides he is in Xing now anyway, so I have to find someone else for this honorary work, and I’ve decided it gotta be you. And before you started complaining and saying shit and being the bastard you are, think of it as me making a favor to you, cause with all those slacking you do, you could use some exercise once in awhile, you lazy bastard, you don’t wanna die young, don’t you, Mustang, this amount of sitting you do is fucking unhealthy, there, see, now I am providing you with great opportunity to improve your health by carrying my luggage from the platform to your car, and then from the car to the hotel, now don’t ever say I am not being good to you, and I actually should get paid for risking my life letting you drive me somewhere, but I’m a nice person so I’ll let it slide this time, you are welcome!”

Ed’s voice is a rough edged sound in Roy's ears, bright and vivid, so different from the languid one that is still echoing in his memory, and Roy finds himself smiling despite the feeling of grief blooming in his chest, and he inhales sharply, trying to breath around the lump in his throat. He knows it is nothing less but stupid and meaningless to mourn deaths which have not even happened yet, but he can’t help it now, listening to the vibrant voice of the boy who doesn’t yet know this horrible, crushing grief Roy saw in the eyes of his guest today, and if Roy can do something about that matter - never will.

His whole body is shuddering, trying to keep the tempest of emotions at bay, and Roy notices the sharp edges around every breath he takes only when Edward suddenly interrupts his tirade with a question which sounds too serious in contrast of his previous ranting:

“Oi, Bastard, are you ok?

Roy clears his throat one more time and hopes he sounds as calm as always: “I’m fine, Edward. What time do you arrive?”

“You don’t sound fine. Are you hurt? Did something happen? Are Elisia and Mrs. Hughes okay?” And at the sound of pure worry and fear in Ed’s voice, Roy feels his eyes itch and he holds back tears which are threatening to spill, and his next breath is jagged brier in his throat.

“They are fine, Ed. And I’m not hurt.”

The line is quiet for a moment and Roy can only hear husky breathing, and he can almost guess the trail of emotions going now through Ed’s head - malaise, anger, stubbornness - and the older man hardly suppresses a snicker at the thought that he apparently grew to know the blond too well, if he can detect what he is thinking just from a pattern of his breathing.

“Emm, ok. My train arrives at 23:30... Hey, you sure you are ok? You are breathing like a kicked puppy. You not sick or something? Shit, did someone got hurt? Fuck, Mustang, you’re scaring me, tell me nobody died!”

There is a barely detected shaking in Ed’s voice now, and ice cold runs down Roy’s spine at the sound of this question, and he knows he can’t say anything now, he will explain it later, they will discuss it together, he will show Ed the information he obtained.

But now he doesn’t want to scare the boy, he doesn’t want to make him think that he may have lost someone else. Because it is not true, it didn’t happen, and Roy will make sure it never will. And Roy is going to be alone in his grief, mourning the man who is still alive, because he feels the need to remember, to never forget the sacrifice this man will make, _would_ make to not let his loved ones go through hell of war.

“Nobody died, Ed, I promise,” he reassures young man, praying his voice is not shaking too much.

“Em, ok.. You know what, I just checked the schedule, turns out this train is canceled, so I suppose I gotta take an earlier train, what a pain in the ass, but hm, well, I’ll take a train tonight, and in that case I’ll be in Central at 6:00 tomorrow morning, yeah... So you better get your lazy ass to the station to this time, Mustang! I don’t care if it’s Saturday, I am not carrying all those suitcases myself! I swear, if I exit the train and don’t see you on the platform, I’ll fucking get to your house, throw you out of the bed and kick your sorry ass all the way to Xing! You heard me, Bastard, I’ll fucking do it!” He inhales angrily and finishes: “Can’t fucking leave you for one fucking year and you become all mushy, what the fuck, Mustang!”

And at the sound of ill-disguised worry in Ed’s voice, Roy feels last strands of self-control leaving him and he lets his masks slip - just this time, he tells himself, - and he doesn't have anything in him to keep his voice steady and tears at bay, and, he admits to himself, doesn’t want to, and he is tired, so tired, and the perspective of just once letting himself let go feels like blessing, and he lets out shuddering breath as the tears start pouring forth, racking the air with gasping sobs.

“Hey, Bastard, are you listening to me? Hey! What the… Mustang, are you fucking crying?! Dammit, what happened?! Fucking talk to me! Mustang? Shit, are you hurt? Talk to me! Roy! Dammit, I’m calling Hawkeye!”

“No, no, wait Ed, it’s fine, no need to alert anyone. I just… It’s been a long day ( _a long year, a long decade_ ), I guess... I guess I’m just tired, I apologize. Everything is fine, Ed… Just come to Central. I’ll explain everything, I promise.”

“He is fucking tired! Fucking bastard, do you even hear what you’re saying? You are a bastard, Mustang, you hear me?! You don’t cry when you’re tired, dammit, I am going to kick your mushy ass for becoming so fucking mushy, nobody is gonna vote for a Führer who is fucking crying cause he is tired. Get your fucking shit together, Mustang or I am gonna tell Hawkeye that you are being a little crying girl at your free time and she’ll come and shoot you. You fucking deserve it.” And Roy thinks if he is imagining panicked notes slipping through the aggressive bravado. “I swear, Roy, if you don’t stop now, I’ll fucking beat your ass tomorrow, I… Are you laughing?! Did you hit your fucking head, Mustang, what the hell is happening, you are pissing me off, stop it now, or I swear to god...”

And here in the darkness of this late evening, wrapped in shadows and the dim light of street lights coming through the windows, listening to worried rants of the man he loves - healthy, strong, so full of life and light, Roy lets himself be lost in the deep well of emotions gathered in his chest since he entered his house this evening and looked at the broken man with a familiar face but unfamiliar eyes; since he got carried away from this plane and faced Truth; since he stood at the grave of his best friend, hiding tears; since he looked in the empty amber stare of a crippled 11-years old kid. And they rip through his chest, and he can’t hold them anymore, and he lets himself be swallowed by all the pain, grief, fear and anger he collected over the years and never fully released, and they are crashing down on him like the tempest's wave, they flow through him, and he lets tears run down his face, he lets shaking laughs leave his throat, and with every passing moment, with every drop of dread leaving his body, he feels more at ease than he’s ever been in years.

And when his legs can’t hold him anymore, he slides down the wall and buries his face in his knees, muffling the sounds of his half laughs half sobs and when the receiver he still holds near his ear reduces colorful rants to just repeating his name, over and over again, with this worried, scared voice, he realises that it is going to be different this time, that he has a power and possibility now to finally make this final step, and he can and will take not a part but the whole weight of this burden and he will do everything in his powers and more to change their lives and the lives of the people he knows and loves, lest this remarkable man, yelling at him through the phone, will ever have to go back to this day to tell the man from his past about death of their friends, to sacrifice himself in the last attempt of saving them, saving others, always others.

And when Edward’s screams exhaust themselves, and Roy’s sobs stops, he finds his voice to say: “I am okay, Ed.”

And he really is now, and he hears long exhale and quiet, hoarse from screaming voice responds:

“I fucking hate you, you know that, right, Bastard?”

“I know.”

“Don’t be late tomorrow.”

“I won’t.”

Ed sighs into the phone and Roy thinks he wants to say something else, but he doesn’t, and then discrete signals of the line going dead fill the silence.

Roy lowers his hand to his side and lets the receiver slip from his palm down to the floor.

He rests the back of his head on a wall behind him, closes his eyes and smiles.

 

**FIN**

**Author's Note:**

> Please, drop me a line in the comments to let me know what you think, it will make my day! ^_^
> 
> [ **Tumblr** ](https://myfandomcauseshanaji.tumblr.com/)
> 
> [ **Twitter** ](https://twitter.com/Kamui_Ril)
> 
> [ **Youtube** ](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrci-WeCVz11-U5NLuBQWqQ?)
> 
> [ **Twitch** ](https://www.twitch.tv/kamuiril)
> 
>  
> 
> Also this was my first ever fanfic, and english is not my native language btw, so I'm quite proud of myself, yeah xD
> 
> The idea with a guest from the future was inspired by _Yesterday and Tomorrow_ by TheScribz.  
>  ~~~~~~~~~
> 
> Series structure:  
>  **Part 1. _Beneath the stains of time._**  
>  _Roy is visited by future!Ed who tells him that everything will go to shit and asks Roy to not let that happen._  
>  Set 2 years after the Promised day.
> 
>  **Part 2. _On broken wings I'm falling._**  
>  Direct sequel to Part 1.
> 
>  **Part 3. _For you are no longer alone (or "The Lamest Marriage Proposal In The History Of Amestris" Award goes to...)_**  
>  _Ed finds the ring._  
>  Set 4 years after. (Oneshot, fluff)
> 
>  **Part 4. _Lest we forget_**  
>  The main piece.  
> Takes place 13-16 years after parts 1 and 2 (1930-1933 yy.)  
>   
>  **Part 5. _and in the end, as the darkness takes me_**  
>  Oneshot standalone angst from future!Edward's POV. Character's death. Memory loss, brain trauma.  
> Just a quick view in the inside of Edward's damaged mind of his last couple of months.
> 
> [ **Buy me a coffee**](http://ko-fi.com/kamuiril) ^_^


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